The thug sorcerer has a pugnacious attitude until the bitter end. He glares in angry disbelief as the man-beast's sword expertly cleaves into him and delivers the killing blow. He falls to the carpet next to his fallen ally. From underneath his body begins spreading a large pool of blood.

Blackacre rubs his eyes and blinks, grateful to be able to see again. He marches over in his polished black boots to join his companions, hitches his thumbs in his belt, and looks down at the dead enemies at their feet with a grim expression.

The last remaining sorceress sees Ianez open the doors to the lounge. She surmises correctly what must have happened to Melanie and Dex, and comes out of invisibility. You can see that she now stands at the base of the stairs. She flips the end of her hair back over her shoulder and raises her chin haughtily.

"Okay, okay!" she says. "I know when I'm outnumbered. I know when I'm fighting a losing battle. I don't care what Ludo says, this isn't worth it! I give up. You win." She raises her hands in surrender. "I want to take you up on your offer. Don't kill me. I want to live." She looks sidelong at the Mechanical Manservant. "Make the construct stand down. Get it away from me!"

As her eyes fill with binary, Caromarc shouts and the stranger monologues, La Siréene remains serene, even happy.

“…who they were previously.” This will change me, regardless of what the stranger is trying to convince Caromarc. Well, I was aware of this. My body will be the body of La Siréene. I could not be happier. Everything else is… immaterial.

Oops, I didn't answer your question yet. Caromarc doesn't know what would happen if he left the vat, but he can guess he might not survive. As a practical matter, it would be hard to detach the tubes, he is suspended in the liquid, and his burns are not quite healed.

@La Siréene, Caromarc:

"Completely safe," the stranger says. "We're almost done." He pulls a swing-arm over La Siréene's head. A tiny beam of light shines in her eyes. He wheels a table with clamps, pliers, sheets of metal, bolts... A whirring drill starts up, followed by the hiss of a forge and a blacksmith press. The room becomes warm, a little humid.

He lights up an acetylene torch. FSSHHHHSHHHHHHSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"And now to add some finishing touches."

He flicks a switch on the containment tank. Robotic arms rise up through the liquid. They end in claws holding a scalpel, pliers, a laser, copper wires, and various cybernetic enhancements. They hover in the liquid for an eerie moment. Then, they close in.

Quinn slowly moves up to Paige, bow and arrow pointing in her direction. "Get down on the ground. You won't face the construct.... I'll let the half-orc have you. I hear he eats people on rare occassions.... so NO FUNNY BUSINESS!!!" The monk screams the last few words at the sorceress.

"Ugh!" Paige retorts. She kneels, stumbles on her high-heeled shoe and loses her balance slightly, then steadies herself with her hand and lowers herself to the floor. She keeps her hands where you can see them. She frowns at Quinn. It is clear that the woman is hard as nails.

Paige has removed herself from combat, so we'll end taking turns in initiative order.

As the noises start, La Siréene starts to think differently, as if her mental processes had been working on a different wavelength. The mind considers the situation.

What is this? Strange. Analyze. The being strapped to this table was unworried of the fate that may befall it. Irrational. What did it believe? That, under the circumstances, nothing could match the importance of being a certain shape? Enjoyable, sure, but enjoyment at the cost of survival? Irrational. I recognize this behavior. Constructs can prefer other constructs – even the memory of other constructs – over their own existence. I am no construct, but a thinking being. La Siréene was interesting. But she was not self-aware. Yet, the mind calms down again, and once more feels content.

Yet, she might have been. My existence has become honor for her memory. She is…important. I realize this is the act of a construct. Yet I am self-aware. I chose this act, this - possibly last - choice. I chose to value her.

Network, Caromarc.:

Her voice calm, distant, she speaks. ”I take it, then, that the ability for independent reasoning will be “externalized psychological content”. Shame. It could have been useful.“

Your spirit reaches the threshold before returning to life. Before you hovers an avatar in the form an Aasimar male with blue eyes, golden blonde hair, and a thin, light build a little taller than you.

"Your spirit was returning home to Purgatory. But it was intercepted. Do you give your consent to return to life?"

@Caromarc:

Your spirit reaches the threshold before returning to life. Before you hovers an avatar in the form of a human female in a flowing white dress, with alabaster skin, long white hair, and fine, graceful hands.

"Your spirit was returning home to Nirvana. But it was intercepted. Do you give your consent to return to life?"

"Paige, I would be more inclined to listen to you if you told us what you know of the vault, and what happened to Caromarc and La Siréene." As he waits for her to answer he remembers hearing something while he was blinded. "You think about that for a moment." Returning to the room, Ianez looks for the thing he heard fall from Caromarc's hand.

Elspeth's instincts are rising. The ones she hates are dead. Time to hunt quietly now. Like a shadow's whisper she slides into the floor and starts to head out after the hated ones' friends, the feel of life calling to her implanted instincts.
Stealth - assuming normal lighting - 1d20 + 26 ⇒ (1) + 26 = 27

"The necromantic energies that were consuming him were temporarily abated by the blessed water I poured on the urn he touched, but his struggle against them seemed to continue before La Siréene was torn apart by the same forces. Just after I was blinded it sounded as though he began to breathe normally again. From the sounds after that and the damage to the area I surmise that one of the sorcerers cast a fireball, and that was enough to remove him from the fight. I thought I heard him drop something at that point."

Quinn takes his silken rope, ties her hands together and with the excess loops around her arms to her torso so that she can't raise her arms. The monk then picks Paige up in a fireman's carry and takes her to the lounge. In there he finds a chair or sofa and plops her down.
"It would be best that you cooperate with us. You see that guy over there..." Quinn points to Sandru and smiles at Paige.

"You think Ludo confided his deep, dark secrets to the arm candy?" Paige snarls at Ianez and Quinn. "I was relegated to that role the moment I showed up here. The vault was some sort of thing between him and Reeva. She was the one who invented it and created all of the magic involved. Crazy Reeva!" She snorts in derision. "Don't get me wrong. She was powerful as a hundred hells." Paige flips her hair again. Her gown slips a little ways off her shoulder. She looks even more ravishing if possible, now that she's casted herself as a damsel-in-distress. "I say 'was'. I assume you put an end to her too."

She shrugs resignedly and continues. "From what I guessed of the vault, Reeva's trick involved her killing and resurrecting herself to pass back and forth across the threshold. I think the vault was in the afterlife...whatever that meant. I wasn't in the lounge when your pals died, so I can't speak to that. But odds are Reeva did some creep-o thing with spirits or undead or something that killed them. Probably the ghosts of those halflings she butchered. That would be her style."

"Now, that is a good girl. You see how much easier it is to coorporate. You live longer." Quinn stands in front and to the side of her, arm across his chest, continuing to question the sorceress.

"Again....I'm not the bright one here, so you have to explain it easy and slow." Quinn makes an attempt at sarcasism. "Who is responsible for the undead and where are they coming from? I find it hard to believe that your guys did not have a hand in it."

"I saw him but a few moments ago, though admittedly that was before--" He gestures around them, a sweep of his hand taking in the smoldering drapes, La Siréene's mutilated form, the scattered furniture, and the now-headless bodies. "--all this."

Paige shoots a contemptuous look at the monk. "Don't condescend to me! Well, believe it, handsome! We didn't cause the waves of undead. We only sought to control them and use it to our advantage." Her nostrils flare. "And really, isn't that what you expected me to confess?" She shakes her head. "Well, it doesn't matter. It is true."

"Your spirit was returning home to Purgatory. But it was intercepted. Do you give your consent to return to life?"

La Siréene considers this. La Siréene likes to think things through. But her decision is already made. Another chance. Another chance to find interesting and fascinating constructs. Another chance to increase my own knowledge. Another chance to experience the world in the body of La Siréene Dorée.

First, however, she seeks information. ”Who intercepted me?”

After hearing the answer, she responds: ”A chance to live, to experience, again. A chance to be La Siréene Dorée again. I consent.”

The archaeologist grabs Paige by the rope around her torso and hauls her off the couch. "Watch yourself...I think the Earl's pet is after you. I wonder why? I believe it already killed the sorcerer who fireballed him."

Quinn moves in front of Elspeth, blocking her from getting to Paige. The monk tells the creature, "Not yet sweetie. I know you're angry for what they did to La Sireene. If she doesn't behave then you can have her."

Quinn notices the half-orc picking up trinkets. "Hey there....Sand-man...what are you planning on doing with all that stuff you're pickig up?"

"I'm not holding out on you here, but the only way you could bring down those barriers is by killing Ludo. It's his spell. But who knows where he disappeared off to?" She smiles to herself, remembering when Ludo teleported S away.

Ianez successfully picks up the orb. The surface is metal and gives off a pink glow. It has a line around the middle of it. There appears to be a top half and a bottom half.

Blackacre rummages around in his pack for his tools of "advanced interrogation" - pliers, claw hammer, crowbar, acid flasks, a small saw, iron spikes. He turns to Paige. "I hope you are being straightforward with us, because otherwise we'll get the truth out of you one way or another." He swings a set of masterwork manacles. "Remember gentlemen, I have these too."

"Ludo bailed on me. He will retaliate against me when he finds out that I didn't kill you. It's to my benefit for you to get the upper-hand on him and prevent that. I'm not your ally, but like I said, I'm out for self-preservation. So, I know it's difficult under these circumstances, but you can trust what I'm telling you is true."

At that moment, shadows rumble in like storm clouds along the ceiling of the lounge. The entire ceiling turns into a dark, night sky, with rolling thunder and flashes of lightning. Winds whip Paige's hair in her face and blow her dress around wildly, and create a tempest around Ianez, Sandru, Quinn, and Blackacre. In the middle of the ceiling, the clouds part, creating a shifting tornado-y vortex, incandescent and blue, like light reflected off water on the walls of a grotto.

There is a loud CRACK! Two figures fall from the vortex and land in a heap on the floor.

The first one is a distinguished-looking fellow in recognizable purples, but his skin is alabaster white and...stitched...together in irregularly-shaped patches with thick, dark, black stitches, like a macabre quilt. His hair hangs lank around his face and is pitch black. When his eyelids flutter, you can see that the whites are veined with red.

The second figure is a female with golden, blonde hair and a small, thin build. She is sprawled like a battered doll on the floor. She looks recognizable too. Except the left half of her skull is a metal plate, from just above her ear extending down to the middle of her jaw. While her right eye is intact, her left eye has been replaced with an eye-scope with an emerald-colored lens.

It is Caromarc and La Siréene. They are "returned" to you.

Caromarc and La Siréene each take a resurrection, or in this case "reanimation", penalty of -1 to all d20 rolls until the duration of 6 main encounters has passed.